| World Class Creative Firm Keeping It Austin |
| Written by Steve Muccini | |||||
Action Figure produces many of the commercials, music videos, and TV shows that you see every day on any given national network. They bring marketing campaigns to life for many of the world's largest ad agencies with high-profile clients, including AT&T, BMW, and Southwest Airlines. Interestingly enough, their own marketing campaign consists solely on the good words from these companies. Of course, the millions of views they have picked up on their fascinating clip of a bunch of people getting their heads slugged hasn’t hurt either (see video below). Take a quick gander at the bevy of Telly’s, Addy’s and Lone Star Emmy’s perched on their awards shelf and it is clear that these guys are world class. Twelve years ago, the team began their history right here. They started out in a beautiful Victorian house on 10th and Congress. They eventually reached a point where the facility wasn’t fitting the bill as an optimal soundstage. A couple years back, the team made the decision to join so many of Austin’s great artists and creatives over on the East Side. Their facility, a former meat packing plant, has plenty of “Austin-cool” space for their post production suites along with 16,000 square feet of soundstage space known as East Side Studios. Complete with a green room for prettying up your actors, amps and amps of juice, acoustic sound proofing, and a thick data line strung into their Avid editing suites, it represents a model of operational efficiency. So perfect a sound studio, Austin’s own Los Lonely Boys even set up shop and recorded their Forgiven album there.  Former meat-packing digs In their kitchen area, Hovis points to the massive square window they carved out of the thick concrete wall to alleviate the cold, industrial feel you might expect from a former meat locker. Sitting right there just under the window is the massive slab of concrete that they carved out. Throw down some comfy pillow seats and, “BAM”, you have a perfect sushi table. Creative ingenuity at its best. Commercial productions require a lot of individuals to get them shot. Crew sizes range anywhere from eight to as many as 40 people, most of who are independently contracted, local freelancers. Once it is shot, pass the project along to another team of indie video editors, sound engineers, musicians, graphic designers, and voice over artists to cut and polish the final gem. Hovis is quick to mention the importance of having the right people on the job. Producing commercials requires the creative collaboration of all these individual talents and personalities. A single bad attitude on set can quickly tank all hopes of a happy and productive set. Hovis’ concern is that we simply do not have enough work to keep all of these Austinites gainfully employed. What happens to a freelancer-rich work force when the work ain’t here? It’s simple, they go where the work is. The saving grace for Austin has always been that there are so many other reasons for people to want to make their home here. Good news for the city, but in the tough times (like now), the careful balance between choosing the place you like to be with the place you have to be to make a living is always at risk of hitting the tipping point.
Steve Muccini is president of SpotEdge Media, an award winning video production company producing content for TV and the web, and also HomeSaleVideo.com . He is also a writer, producer and actor in Austin, Texas.
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For the time being, Austin’s powerful draw seems to be winning out. Hovis mentions that he is seeing more and more East and West Coast post production pros calling Austin their new hometown. That is mostly because super talented creatives typically have plenty of options when it comes to picking a cool place to settle. Once they find that place (Austin, let’s say) they become magnets for out-of-town productions and creative houses from the other two coasts looking to set up a satellite. In a business where your most important asset is your creative brain power, it is a pretty effective strategy to drop an office smack dab in the middle of the honey pot. The trick now is to make sure that Austin can generate enough production business to sustain them all. In a city where local companies often cite their Austin headquarters as a top item in their benefits package, it really shouldn’t be hard to bring more work here. Here’s a tip, if your expensive digs and exorbitant production costs in LA or NYC are beginning to carve a nice big concrete hole out of your profitability, you need to check out Austin.